Stonewall Hinkleman and the Battle of Bull Run by Sam Riddleburger Page A

hundred yards away to our left. I crane my neck to snatch a peek at the paper. Just as quick, Dupree turns back and catches me looking. I glance away, but still feel his eyes burning a hole in the top of my head as I hear him fold up the paper and tuck it away.
    But I saw all I needed to see. The paper was a map. A map of the battlefield . . . with officers’ names and dates . . . created by the National Park Service in the twenty-first century and handed out for free in the Manassas visitors’ center.
    So that’s how he convinced the officers he wasn’t just a lunatic. He’s been using that map to make predictions all day, and now the officers are starting to believe him.
    By now about a hundred men have swarmed to us. I’m glad to see that Big Jim and Elmer are among them and okay. I wonder how their brother is doing.
    Cyrus cries out, “See General Bee! We can still join his men.” His shout seems to be answered by one from Bee’s group. He and his men are about halfway between us and the Yankee line. Wounded and dead Confederates litter the ground behind Bee’s charging men, but they’ve blown big holes in the Union line up ahead of them. They just might do it. Just a little farther . . . a well-placed assault to crush the Union flank and . . .
    There’s an eerie calm as we wait to hear him yell “Charge!” Suddenly General Bee falls from his horse to the ground. Almost immediately another officer leaps from his horse and is at General Bee’s side.
    We see General Bee push himself up to his hands and knees, and a cheer erupts from the men around me. I give a shout too, but the cry isn’t completely out of my mouth when I see General Bee collapse back to the ground and lie still. The Confederate charge wavers. Men fall all around him.
    â€œWe’ve got to go help them!” cries Cyrus.
    â€œNo!” orders the pale-faced officer. “Bee is lost. We have another mission.”
    He points farther to our left, just north of the Yankee line. It’s the hill where Dupree was just looking.
    â€œI have just received intelligence that in a few minutes Union cannons will be wheeled to that spot,” the officer says. He glances at Dupree as if for reassurance. Dupree nods. “If they take that hill, they will be able to flank us and bombard our entire line and we will be destroyed. We must take the cannons first.”
    This plan sounds familiar to me. It seems like I remember reading in one of Dad’s history books something about Confederate troops capturing, or trying to capture, some Union artillery. Practically a suicide mission, like General Bee’s just now. But I can’t recall what they did with the guns once they seized them. One thing I’m sure of—the books never said anything about which of those soldiers ever made it back alive.
    Now I’m one of those soldiers. Only my mission is to make their mission fail.
    The officer gives the order—“Keep close to the flag!”—and we take off. It’s more of a sprint than a march. At the head of our group, a guy is huffing with this Rebel flag in his hands. No gun, just a flag.
    The weight of my gun practically topples me over. I’m gasping as we hit the hill. Someone starts shooting at us, but no one gets hit. We hurdle a split-rail fence and disappear into a cornfield.
    â€œStay together! Stay together!” Cyrus shouts, staying low and cutting through the rows of chest-high corn so fast it’s nearly impossible for any of us to stay together. Especially me. This is like having twenty gym classes in a row. And I suck at gym. I’m the last to make it to the far side of the cornfield.
    We fall to the ground and peer out through the corn. We’re halfway up the short hill where the cannons are supposed to be set up.
    â€œI don’t see a durn thing,” Cyrus mutters. “Some intelligence.”
    As if on cue, a team of horses